You love , but you don’t like the cluttered home page? Harald Hanek, a German programmer, developed Gollum, a simplified interface that piggybacks on your existing browser. Currently, you need to visit the Gollum site in order to use it; a beta download is promised. Invoking Gollum brings up an interation of your browser that lets you enter your search term in the address bar; there’s nothing else on the screen other than a Gollum logo. The search result fills the screen without the Wikipedia sidebar or the editing links—just the encyclopedia entry itself.

According to a ZDNet interview, Hanek developed the interface for his daughter. I’m not sure I’d find it more useful than the existing approach to Wikipedia, but some might appreciate its simplicity and speed. In any case, it’s another interesting example of users tweaking products and services to meet their own needs. Hanek developed Gollum in AJAX, the same web apps programming language used to create Placeopedia, a mashup of Wikiepedia and Google Maps.